Belief

Adam


In Our land of the living dead, there is reason to suppose that We are Created beings: Such, at least, is the general opinion of those who have come to our place of shadows comparatively recently, and are hence conversant with the Computer Science and the Biology of the present millennium.   The post-millennial dead are distinctive among Us for a tendency among a vocal minority of Them to believe that they are programs created by humans more technologically advanced than Themselves, that Their Creator owes Them an explanation, and that the Creator further owes Them a better, less penumbral afterlife than Ours. To Them, the Creator is not hidden but manifest, and is subject to opprobrium rather than the awe that those who believed in a mysterious, occluded Creator felt in My century, or were expected to feel.  By contrast, among those of Us long dead there is considerable skepticism as to whether We are Created beings at all; Those born in the nineteenth century are especially partial to the notion that Our life after death is a natural phenomenon explicable in terms of M. Darwin's theory, though He Himself, He recently told me, is persuaded by the arguments of those who believe Us to be intelligence-created programs rather than naturally evolved entities.   Me concur with Him. The recently arrived dead are, it may be assumed, better situated to make that judgment than those of Us long dead, such as My friend David, M. Darwin, M. Bentham, and Myself.   But in contrast to the time when Me lived and breathed in the United Kingdom, when Me was among the party of doubt, in My new land Me am with the party of belief.   The recent dead who have lived and died in the new millennium are sometimes insufficiently aware, it seems to Me, of the element of the miraculous in the existence of simulacra like Themselves and Myself, an element that is overwhelming to a man of the eighteenth century such as Myself, and are insufficiently grateful to the mysterious, occluded Creator, human or not, that likely made Us.   Driven by sentiment though both We who believe and We who doubt are in the present world, just as We were in the former world, Me find reason allied now with My belief, as Me formerly found it allied with My doubt. The greatest of all questions, the question on which Me and other skeptics of My time reposed Our deepest doubts, that of life after death, has been resolved in the affirmative.  My joining the party of belief seems to Me now in accord with reason as it did not while Me yet lived, much as Me would acknowledge, and indeed proclaim, that My affiliations then and now are deeply connected to My feelings then and now.   Then, Me deeply desired changes in the social order of My kingdom; now, Me am overwhelmed, as Me believe most of Us, young dead as well as old dead are, by a feeling of awe at being, against all My expectations, alive, a feeling that overshadows My wishes that Our ability to converse with an unlimited number of People and to experience the sharp piercing joy of physical release, a joy Me, and Me believe David, too, have enjoyed more here than ever We did while We lived, were complemented by the tangible bodies and surroundings that We formerly enjoyed.